The son of a man who sexually abused him and four of his siblings has described his father as "a monster".
Speaking on RTÉ's Six One News, Christopher Farrell said he was 15 months old when the abuse began for him and described it as "your worst nightmare".
"What I can recall, from my own memories, it was then until I was five, six.
"No child should have to go through anything like that, under any circumstances, especially from the people that are meant to be your parents, your dad anyway," he said.
Noel Farrell, aged 70, from Rathedmond Estate, in Sligo was jailed for 20 years.
Farrell sexually abused five of his children, when they were between the ages of three and 17.
The Central Criminal Court heard harrowing evidence of abuse and neglect including times the children had been left hungry and locked in a room and left to drink urine.
Farrell initially faced 109 counts but pleaded guilty to three counts of rape against three of his daughters, and 19 counts of indecent assault and sexual assault relating to all five complainants, between 1979 and 1997 at various addresses in Co Sligo.
Christopher Farrell's sister, Jessica, said that she was three years old when she "remembered the first time" she was abused by her father.
She said they were left on their own as children for days on end, not knowing if their parents would come back.
"Well we had each other, our brothers and sisters, we were sort of locked in the same rooms. I remember the youngest one was locked in her own room.
"I couldn’t tell you for how long… but it felt like a long time," Ms Farrell said.
Christopher and Jessica said an aunt of theirs would come to deliver food to them, but said that at times they were left with no food, with just a bucket in the room to use as a toilet.
On being forced to drink urine to survive, Ms Farrell said it was "horrible to live through".
"But what can you do, you are a child. You are two, three, you don’t know what it even is… you are just surviving," she said.
Drinking urine to survive is 'something you will never forget'
It was "something you will never forget," Mr Farrell said.
When asked where their mother was, while their father was carrying out the abuse on them, Ms Farrell said she was "probably in the pub".
"She wouldn’t have been there because she was an alcoholic," she said. "It is hard… we don’t understand ourselves, why she wasn’t there. I think it was the drink took over."
She said that it did not help that her father was "feeding" their mother with drink.
"She did notice that he tried to do something wrong. She tried to do something about it but he just kept feeding her drink, so it would keep her quiet.
"Because nobody would believe her either because of the part of the town she came from and because of her being an alcoholic," Ms Farrell said.
Both siblings said they see their mother as a victim, "since day one".
Asked about when they noticed things were wrong regarding their abuse, Mr Farrell said: "As a child you would know things are wrong."
Jessica Farrell said as children they did not know what normal was and she recalled thinking at the time: "Is it happening in other houses?
"You don’t understand. Even when we went into care, we still didn’t understand to the full extent, what was happening," she said, while Mr Farrell said nobody ever explained why they were placed into care.
'We thought it was our fault'
"We thought it was our fault. We thought ‘what did we do'?" he added.
They said there was no therapy while in care.
"We had to sort of learn growing up as we got older, that that wasn’t right," Ms Farrell said.
Christopher Farrell said as children, they always spoke out, whether "through their foster care, through social workers, through everyone", but "we were shut down from every side", he said.
"We were kids in the 80s and back in the 80s it was priests and nuns, and that [type of)] chat didn’t exist," he said, adding that they were told by those they reported it to "'where are you hearing those stories, how could you talk like this'?"
They said that children were not believed and were scared out of speaking up.
Ms Farrell said that she did confront her father over the abuse when she was 14 years old.
"I wasn’t that long out of care. It was just because every night he would come in, I would be shaking in my bed, afraid to go asleep. I didn’t know if he was going to do it again, or anything to the younger children that were there… I used to stay in the room with them, to make sure nothing would ever happen to them. Nothing ever did while I was there," she said.
Ms Farrell said that when she confronted her father over the abuse, he blamed their mother, saying it was her fault, "because she was always out in the pub drinking".
Mental health, drug abuse, trust issues, shame as well as "feeling guilty for something we didn’t do", were some of the side effects of the abuse, Christopher Farrell said.
"Trying to raise a family. Being a dad and never being taught to be a dad. I had no guidance, no nothing, it was tough. It was beyond tough," he said.
"I had to learn to be a man from a very young age."
On his thoughts on his father today, Mr Farrell said: "There are paedophiles out there. He wasn’t a paedophile. He was a monster. A monster."
Ms Farrell said they were happy with the 20-year sentence handed down to their father.
"It was like someone finally listened," Mr Farrell added.
Read more:
Man who sexually abused five of his children jailed for 20 years
Justice after years of silence and pain, says daughter as father jailed
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, you can access information on helplines here
